Narrow Results

In this paper, we explore preparedness strategies for the initial response to crisis-driven innovation, in the context of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Using insights from semi-structured interviews with public health strategists, we apply analytic induction to investigate preparedness to innovate, and the main forms of crisis-driven innovation applied in the initial COVID-19 response. We thematically analyze measures of preparedness for the initial COVID-19 response and propose a framing aimed at boosting readiness for crisis-driven innovation. Our study finds themes on COVID-19 preparedness strategies involving combat-inspired public policies from assessed security, cyclic-oriented public projections of actionable safeguards, and continuity-driven public provisions for anticipated situations. The study also captures themes on crisis response as crisis-driven innovation in relation to digitalized, integrated, and tailored public services, initiatives, and systems. Our paper concludes with discussions on the implications of innovation intelligence for crisis preparedness, “ripple-inspired inside-out” view of crisis-driven innovation, “response as innovation” framings, and suggestions for further studies.

In this paper, we analyze 26 Chinese sectoral indices and evaluate the effects of the crisis caused by COVID-19 on its efficiency. We calculated the degree of multifractality in the pre- and post-COVID-19 period and found that it increases, albeit unevenly, for the economic sectors. The results suggest that global crises can affect the efficiency of the stock markets in an unequal way, with important implications for portfolio management, risk management, financial regulation and the development of predictive models.

During the recent health crisis, certain small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) successfully developed and commercialized new products, sometimes outside their usual business sector. What practices were adopted to carry out these product innovations? To answer this question, an exploratory case study was conducted with two SMEs to learn about their motivations, practices and challenges. The results show that they engaged in innovation to survive, using a succinct and flexible innovation process, combining the principles of the stage gate system with certain aspects of the Xpress and Agile versions. During a crisis, SMEs can deploy an innovation process quickly and with agility if resources and skills are accessible and collaborations possible.

In this paper, we study complex dynamics of the interaction between natural convection and thermal explosion in porous media. This process is modeled with the nonlinear heat equation coupled with the nonstationary Darcy equation under the Boussinesq approximation for a fluid-saturated porous medium in a rectangular domain. Numerical simulations with the Radial Basis Functions Method (RBFM) reveal complex dynamics of solutions and transitions to chaos after a sequence of period doubling bifurcations. Several periodic windows alternate with chaotic regimes due to intermittence or crisis. After the last chaotic regime, a final periodic solution precedes transition to thermal explosion.

This paper considers the sources of employment demand in Asian economies. Using data from the World–Input Output Database, I examine the relative importance of domestic and foreign demand in generating employment. Despite some degree of heterogeneity across the sample, domestic demand is found to be the major driver of employment in all cases. Further, the relative importance of final and intermediate exports in generating employment varies by economy, with some economies relying on intermediate exports to generate employment to a greater extent than others, reflecting their importance as suppliers of intermediate inputs in global value chains, while others rely to a greater extent on final exports, reflecting their role as assemblers within global value chains. Considering developments over time, I find that employment is driven by two offsetting factors: (i) final demand (either domestic or foreign) and (ii) labor productivity, with changes in interindustry structure also being important in the case of intermediate exports.

This chapter introduces the system for crisis management in Sweden. Over the last century, Sweden has gone from being a poor European backwater to being among the countries with the highest human development in the world. The droughts and harsh winters that killed thousands and drove numerous Swedes to emigrate in the past are mere distractions today and the contemporary system for crisis management is designed to deal with a broader variety of crises than the ones triggered by natural hazards. The system is based on the principles of responsibility, parity and proximity, and distributes sector and area responsibility for crisis management to numerous actors. It is built to a great extent on collaboration between these actors, which is challenging but working relatively well in the cultural context of consensus-seeking and compliance to official guidelines and accepted rules of engagement. However, the system is in itself ambiguous in the sense of distributing responsibility to all kinds of actors and then focusing almost exclusively on public actors in legislation, guidelines and practice. There is also often a gap between policy and practice concerning how area responsibility is exercised, and a lack of clarity in current sector specific legislation.

The paper describes some aspects of sudden transformations of closed invariant curves in a 2D piecewise smooth map. In particular, using detailed numerically calculated phase portraits, we discuss transitions from smooth to piecewise smooth closed invariant curves. We show that such transitions may occur not only when a closed invariant curve collides with a border but also via a homoclinic bifurcation. Furthermore, we describe an unusual transformation from a closed invariant curve to a large amplitude chaotic attractor and demonstrate that this transition occurs in two steps, involving a small amplitude closed-invariant-curve-like chaotic attractor.

The study of strange nonchaotic attractors (SNAs) has been mainly restricted to quasiperiodically forced systems. At present, SNAs have also been uncovered in several periodically forced smooth systems with noise. In this work, we consider a periodically forced nonsmooth system and find that SNAs are created by a small amount of noise. SNAs can be generated in different periodic windows with weak noise perturbation. If the parameter is varied further from the chaotic range, a larger noise intensity is required to induce SNAs. Besides, noise-induced SNAs can be generated by the periodic attractors near the boundary crisis. In addition, with the increasing noise intensity, the intermittency between SNAs and periodic attractors can be induced by transient chaos. The characteristics of SNAs are analyzed by the Lyapunov exponent, power spectrum, singular continuous spectrum, spectral distribution functions, and finite time Lyapunov exponent.

This paper investigates the effects of global economic sanctions (GESs) on global bank linkages (GBLs) by using 4,032 pairs of 66 countries during the 2001–2013 period. We use the structural gravity model combining with the rich database of the Global Sanction Data Base introduced by Felbermayr et al. [(2020). The global sanctions data base. European Economic Review, 129, 1–23]. Our empirical results show a negative association between the GESs and GBLs. The differential effects of GESs on the GBLs are conditional on the sanction types. Furthermore, the consequences of global sanctions become more severe for countries featuring higher information asymmetries, captured either by a high level of world uncertainty, an occurrence of crisis and shocks or by a weak institutional system. Our results are robust and reliable when we use an alternative measure of bank connections, and in the context of controlling the potential endogeneity of global sanction.

Nearly 20 years ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched Ready.gov, a national public service advertising campaign designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies such as natural and technological disasters. To date, little is known about the accessibility and adaptability of this information for vulnerable populations including persons with disabilities (PwDs) and those with limited English proficiency (LEP). This computer-automated analysis seeks (1) to determine the general web, mobile and language accessibility of state websites which extend and/or amplify the Ready.gov national campaign goals, (2) to evaluate the document accessibility of downloadable emergency preparedness information, and, based on findings, (3) reflect upon improvement opportunities for disaster and emergency management preparedness messaging processes to vulnerable populations. An exploratory, quantitative content analysis relying on computer-automated software is used to assess the web, language, mobile and document accessibility of Ready.gov state-affiliated websites dedicated to providing public information for emergency preparedness and disaster response. Additional factors such as the use of CAPTCHA, adherence to the Matterhorn Protocol, disclosure of accessibility policy statements, and the presence of tailored information are evaluated. No significant differences among FEMA regions were found. The most frequent errors were likely to impact the POUR dimensions of perceivability and operability. In all, 76% of the Ready.gov state-affiliated websites had WCAG Level AA detectable accessibility failures on the home pages. Furthermore, 62% of the sites offered translational language formats for LEP users, while only 6% ($n=3$) explicitly provided PwDs an option to report accessibility-related user experiences to the agency. Document accessibility was deemed to be poor with 80% of the websites disseminating downloadable .pdfs such as emergency planning guides and preparedness kits in inaccessible digital formats. These findings identify opportunities for improvement specifically, in the web, mobile and document accessibility of information associated with the Ready.gov national campaign. We argue that improvement and compliance is expected to reduce the likelihood of litigation, increase the resilience of vulnerable populations, and improve user experiences.

This research is about disaster risk reduction and management using learning from past disasters as theoretical framework because disasters and crises continue to re-occur for the same reasons they could have been prevented and mitigated. This chapter has two main aims. First, to consider how lessons from past disasters, may be linked to strategies for disaster risk reduction and management. Second, critically review how lessons from disasters can be made actionable in an organizational context using conceptual model of actionable learning from disasters. Historically, proximate cause and nature of risk, crisis and disaster has generated intense theories and models in both the social and pure sciences. Albeit the applied implications of existing risk and disaster theories are questionable, this research informs the debates about risk, crisis and disaster management theory and practice by considering and reflecting on mindfulness, complexity, modernity, fragility, isomorphic learning, and policies ambiguity; and the application of disasters lessons from cross-organizational isomorphism, event isomorphism and self-isomorphism. One of the fundamental contributions involved using case studies of two emergency and disaster response organizations in Ghana and Nigeria which were used to address the issues raised in the research. In conclusion, the chapter reflected on the challenges of learning from past disasters, devoted to the explanation of disaster risk reduction strategies and its components: identification, prevention, reduction, mitigation and appraisal, evaluation, management and communication, flexibility, resilience and robustness. The main lessons and implications from “actionable learning from disasters model” to disaster risk reduction and management are discussed.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia's most populous state and its largest economy, was deeply affected by the economic crisis of 1997–1998. Its economic contraction in 1998, of over 13%, was the sharpest among all four crisis-affected East Asian economies. This followed three decades of virtually uninterrupted, rapid economic growth. The country's economic crisis was accompanied by regime collapse, resulting in the departure of then President Suharto after 32 years of authoritarian rule. This paper examines the country's socioeconomic development in the decade since the crisis, in the context of the earlier growth, and the very different institutions of economic governance operating under the new democratic regime of weakened central authority and many more economic policy actors. The main conclusions are that growth and macroeconomic stability have been restored surprisingly quickly, but that microeconomic policy and the investment climate are less predictable.

Bifurcations and chaos in a network of three identical sigmoidal neurons are examined. The network consists of a two-neuron oscillator of the Wilson–Cowan type and an additional third neuron, which has a simpler structure than chaotic neural networks in the previous studies. A codimension-two fold-pitchfork bifurcation connecting two periodic solutions exists, which is accompanied by the Neimark–Sacker bifurcation. A stable quasiperiodic solution is generated and Arnold’s tongues emanate from the locus of the Neimark–Sacker bifurcation in a two-dimensional parameter space. The merging, splitting and crossing of the Arnold tongues are observed. Further, multiple chaotic attractors are generated through cascades of period-doubling bifurcations of periodic solutions in the Arnold tongues. The chaotic attractors grow and are destroyed through crises. Transient chaos and crisis-induced intermittency due to the crises are also observed. These quasiperiodic solutions and chaotic attractors are robust to small asymmetry in the output function of neurons.

This work aims to inspect the common debate about the implication of derivative instruments in amplifying the last financial crisis. To reach this goal, the study chooses a sample of banks entirely from emerging countries — over the whole period 2003–2011 — in which we examine the impact of derivatives simultaneously on performance, risk and stability during the ordinary period “the pre-crisis period”, 2003–2006, and the unstable period “the crisis and post crisis period”, 2007–2011. The regressions are estimated by generalized methods of moments (GMM) as developed by Blundell and Bond (1998). The major conclusion reveals that only swaps can be considered as implicated in the intensification of the last financial crisis. Therefore, the rest of derivatives instruments cannot be responsible in the amplification of the recent financial crisis. Indeed, the widespread idea accusing all derivatives to be in part responsible of the intensification of the last financial crisis should be revised.

In this paper, we compare the performance of Islamic stock indices (ISI) and conventional stock indices (CSI) from FTSE, DJ, MSCI, S&Ps and Jakarta series using common risk-return metrics. The sample consists of 64 ISI and CSI, and covers the period from 2002 to 2017. The majority of the stock indices are from the Pacific Rim countries’ stock markets. Additionally, we employ the GARCH-M model to examine the impact of past volatility on spot returns. Findings suggest that the ISI are less sensitive to the average market movements compared to the CSI, but surprisingly offer similar raw returns suggesting primary support for the low risk-high return paradox. On further examination, results reveal that M², Omega, Sharpe and Treynor measures indicate that ISI underperform CSI while Jensen’s alpha and Sortino ratio put ISI ahead of CSI. Moreover, findings show that pre-crisis winners (CSI) were losers during the 2008 crisis but subsequently recovered and ended up with higher returns than ISI. Findings also show that the previous volatility of stock returns can be potentially used for predicting future returns.

Exogenous shocks and environmental changes may force small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to change and innovate their business models. However, their readiness and ability to do so could depend on firm-level characteristics. This paper investigates how two firm-level factors—size and age—impact SMEs’ engagement in business model innovation in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Using World Bank Enterprise Survey data covering 2,115 SMEs from 12 countries, this study shows that the age of an SME is negatively associated with business model innovation. The finding also shows that, contrary to the hypothesis posed in this study, the size of an SME impacts business model innovation positively. The study contributes to the understanding of antecedents of business model innovation in times of environmental change and uncertainty.

This paper is devoted to the dynamical behavior of a parametrically driven double-well Duffing (PDWD) system. Despite the invariant property of symmetry, this simple model exhibits a large diversity of patterns which can be observed in different situations. The transitions between symmetric forms of system responses often lead to bifurcation or crisis and complicated behaviors, such as the coexistence of different kinds of attractors. The bifurcations and crises are discussed, especially those inside the main periodic window. In particular, the role of chaotic saddles and their intrinsic links with the basin of attraction and transient chaos is studied.

A macroeconomic model based on the economic variables (i) assets, (ii) leverage (defined as debt over asset) and (iii) trust (defined as the maximum sustainable leverage) is proposed to investigate the role of credit in the dynamics of economic growth, and how credit may be associated with both economic performance and confidence. Our first notable finding is the mechanism of reward/penalty associated with patience, as quantified by the return on assets. In regular economies where the EBITA/Assets ratio is larger than the cost of debt, starting with a trust higher than leverage results in the highest long-term return on assets (which can be seen as a proxy for economic growth). Therefore, patient economies that first build trust and then increase leverage are positively rewarded. Our second main finding concerns a recommendation for the reaction of a central bank to an external shock that affects negatively the economic growth. We find that late policy intervention in the model economy results in the highest long-term return on assets. However, this comes at the cost of suffering longer from the crisis until the intervention occurs. The phenomenon that late intervention is most effective to attain a high long-term return on assets can be ascribed to the fact that postponing intervention allows trust to increase first, and it is most effective to intervene when trust is high. These results are derived from two fundamental assumptions underlying our model: (a) trust tends to increase when it is above leverage; (b) economic agents learn optimally to adjust debt for a given level of trust and amount of assets. Using a Markov Switching Model for the EBITA/Assets ratio, we have successfully calibrated our model to the empirical data of the return on equity of the EURO STOXX 50 for the time period 2000–2013. We find that dynamics of leverage and trust can be highly nonmonotonous with curved trajectories, as a result of the nonlinear coupling between the variables. This has an important implication for policy makers, suggesting that simple linear forecasting can be deceiving in some regimes and may lead to inappropriate policy decisions.

Birhythmicity oscillators have been extensively applied in fields such as biology, physics, and engineering. Studying their global dynamics is crucial for gaining a comprehensive understanding of the intrinsic mechanisms that govern oscillator behavior. This paper focuses on investigating the influence of memory effects on the global dynamics of the fractional birhythmic van der Pol (BVDP) oscillator. To determine the system’s global properties, we employ an improved cell mapping method. Specifically, the system’s evolution is computed by introducing additional auxiliary variables, creating a space for storing historical information. This method allows us to examine the system’s global properties without memory loss. Through a comparison of the global dynamic behaviors of BVDP oscillators with memory to those without memory, we observe that the presence of memory effects results in the emergence of chaotic attractors in the system. This, in turns, results in system instability and heightened sensitivity to initial conditions. Furthermore, our findings suggest that changes in the fractional-order can induce various crises in the oscillator and may have the potential to suppress chaotic oscillations.

This paper characterises the joint impacts of intra- and extra-organisational contexts on innovation development during the socio-economic crisis in Portugal. The characterisation of these contexts in 309 firms of the Information and Communication Technology services sector allowed for the identification of two profiles via a cluster analysis. These were mostly discriminated by financial resources and clients and not by science and technology activities. Subsequently, these profiles were related to innovation, top managers’ perceptions and expectations for the future. The data shows that under favourable contexts, innovation increases, the firm is perceived to drive innovation and confidence in the companies’ future emerges. In more unfavourable scenarios, innovation is compromised, the environment is perceived to block innovation and confidence is halted. This paper establishes companies’ profiles for the first time in Portugal and suggests that intra- and extra-organisational contexts have to be jointly tackled to foster present innovation and promote future activities.